Proust's English (review)

This book provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which Proust populates his works with things English. It describes the extreme anglomanie from which Proust's 'real' world suffered (or profited) and considers how this bears upon his literary creations. Proust's Recherche (somewhat more than Jean Santeuil and Les Plaisirs et les jours) is replete with English words and phrases, frequently in the mouth of Marcel himself. Perhaps unsurprisingly, snob is the most common English word. In his analysis of French snobs, Proust plays with and adapts what Thackeray saw as the term's 'doubleness', in designating both those who look down their noses at others as well as those who look admiringly up them in the direction of their social superiors. While Proust's use of the term is often close to Thackeray's, the author is careful to point out that Proust separates the principle of snobbery from anglomanie. Proust's snobs, while they may be rabidly anglomanes, do not base their treatment of others on their connection with English royalty. French snobbery, including Marcel's, is profoundly chauvinistic. Chapter 2 supplies an analysis of Swann's and Odette's Englishness. While the former's social existence is to a great extent moulded by English words, he speaks English on only one occasion. This linguistic reticence is, paradoxically, a sign of what was commonly perceived as an English form of gentlemanly discretion. Odette's langue is deeply infected by English. Her anglomanie reflects a desire to be chic, but as the author observes, she 'must be the only character in literature [. . .] to think it chic to be seen eating a muffin'. While we may be inclined to approve of Swann's reticence and to frown upon Odette's affectation, it is made clear that Swann has swapped the 'protocol of life for its core'; he is socially disabled by his fear of uttering a 'banalité'. And while he may have some distinguished English friends, Odette can perhaps make better claim to Englishness than he: she is an authentic 'Crécy' (a French family which is a branch of the English nobility) and was 'sold' by her mother to an English gentleman who may have left more than a linguistic mark. The third chapter contains a perceptive investigation of the ways that Elstir's paintings are described. How many readers have noticed, for example, that English words are entirely absent from those descriptions of paintings which appear to be influenced by English artists, and abound in those influenced by French ones? The final chapter, 'Les Mots retrouvés', is just as compelling as the other three. The author discusses the 'impure' language of the Recherche within the context of Remy de Gourmont's obsession with linguistic purity. In Proust's hands, etymology, with its power to reveal a place-name as what Mallarmé (describing the English language) calls an 'idiome composite', demonstrates the sterility of such pureté, and can be viewed, like involuntary memory, as the transversal of space and of time. Everyone interested in Proust should read this book.